Abstract: Mail order companies like Zalando or Amazon reported a significant increase regarding the number of incoming customer orders in recent years. Customers are served from a central distribution center (warehouse) where requested items of the orders have to be retrieved (picked) from their...

Warehouses play a vital role in mitigating variations in supply and demand, and in providing value-added services in a supply chain. However, our observation of supply chain practice reveals that warehousing decisions are not included when developing a distribution plan for the supply chain....

Space required for the order picking area and labor required to perform the picking activity are two significant costs for a distribution center (DC). Traditionally, DCs employ either entirely wide or entirely narrow aisles in their picking systems. Wide aisles allow pickers to pass each other,...